


Shadowbun: New School, Same Hustles

by JackFields



Series: T3 Shadowbun stories [9]
Category: Shadowrun, Zootopia (2016)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-03
Updated: 2017-03-03
Packaged: 2018-09-28 00:12:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,511
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10058453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JackFields/pseuds/JackFields
Summary: Every hustler has to get their start somewhere, but Nikko was taking advanced placement courses in the art of the con before he left high school.





	

As the clock beside the classroom door blinked to 11:47, Nikolas Ataktos scribbled furiously at his tablet, the corners of his mouth curling downwards in a frustrated scowl. Math had never been his strongest subject, and this semester's class load contained not only elementary calculus, but a repeat of last semester's trigonometry. He stole a glance towards the front of the class room, where Mr. Krantzberg sat on a wooden stool behind the lectern. The teacher's eyes were riveted to his Sudoku Seppuku puzzle book, but his long ears twitched back and forth. Nikolas fixed his attention back onto his problem set, determined not to let his attention wander. Krantzberg didn't need to see you cheating to tell you were doing it.

'Ok' he thought, 'negative one over X, negative two becomes positive two, so it's negative one over X squared--'

"Pssst! Nikolas! What's the answer to problem three?" All thoughts of the power rule and its useful application fled, as he tried to pretend that he hadn't heard. The whisperer behind him was Tabot Tarrant, first prop of the school rugby team. The buffalo wasn't a bad guy, but he didn't bring a lot to the table when it came to subtlety.

"Is it seventeen?" Colin whispered again, and this time Nikolas could see the teacher's ears swerve straight towards their corner of the classroom. He hunched down over the desk, and tried to seem like he was absorbed in his work. For half a minute it seemed like Colin had given up. Nikolas was just picking up the thread of the calculus problem, when a flick on the tip of his long pointed ear made him jump. "Nikolas! Is it seventeen or eighteen?" came from behind him, this time in less of a whisper than a low growl. "Fuckin' come on, help me with this one!"

" _Was ist los_?" Krantzberg was standing up on his chair, peering over towards them with a frown. "Niklaus, Tabos, I did not say you may work together, _ja_?" He hopped down from the seat and came trotting over to where they sat. "Present your work, _bitte._ "

Nikolas slumped in his desk, and spun the tablet around so that it faced his teacher. Standing on tip-toe, the little rabbit was just able to peer over the edge of the desk; he reached up and started to make corrections with a red light-pen.

"You do not do your homework, I think..." he muttered, then brushed past to scramble up the side of Tabot's much larger desk. Nikolas examined the bloody slashes up and down the page, hearing the teacher mutter "I see now why you ask Niklaus for help, even he knows this better than you!" Cringing, Nikolas gazed back up at the clock, counting the minutes until the passing bell would ring.

\----

Nikolas didn't stick around once he was free of the classroom, with a quick sideways step he passed between three gazelles and disappeared into the crowded hall. He didn't want to get "volunteered" to help Tabot study for the upcoming test, he had enough to worry about with his own grades. Sparing a few nods and grins to mammals that he knew (some to them he even liked) he made his way from the classroom section of the school to the facilities wing. Ducking under a chain with obligatory "Do Not Enter" sign, and descending a metal staircase, he soon stood on a dimly lit landing outside the boiler room. He always hated coming down here, something about it gave him the creeps, like he was being watched.

From the darkness underneath the staircase, a shadowy form stepped forward into the yellow utility lights. Bushy golden mullet, a studded black pleather jacket, and the faint smoky tang of last night's ganja. None other than Crash Hoskins, the drummer for Manic Correction. Nikolas couldn't stand their music, but the synth-punk quartet had won last year's ZHS Battle of the Bands, so he supposed that there must be something to it.

"Hey. Nikolas. What. Is. The Word?" Crash asked, in his usual slothful manner. He slowly raised one long-clawed paw, Nikolas waited patiently until it was fully upright before leaning in and giving Crash a quick high-five and finger guns. He leaned back against the wall, and waited while the sloth mimicked his gesture, the final gun-finger emphasized with a click of the tongue and wink.

"Crash, my old buddy, I've got what you need. Same deal as before, and since I like you, I'm giving you the usual discount." Reaching into his satchel, Nikolas pulled out foil-backed plastic strip, small red capsules rattling in each sealed cell. He held them up in front of the sloth, one eyebrow cocked and a smug grin across his muzzle. "I just got my ass handed to me in Calc, but I think it comes out to a hundred and twenty?"

Crash's eyes slowly fixated on the sparkling packet in Nikolas's outstretched paw. He made a slow motion grab for it, which Nikolas just as slowly moved out of the way, his grin becoming wider.

"Awww. Man. You. Know. I've. Got. The. Cash." the sloth whined, when his attempt to snatch the pills didn't work. He slowly reached into his jacket, and pulled out a battered-looking credstick. Nikolas plucked it from Crash's long claws, replacing it with the plastic strip in the same motion.

"Oh my. What do we have here?" a deep but feminine voice rumbled from behind Nikolas. He spun around just in time to see a blurred outline flicker against the industrial paint and brick of the hallway. With a shimmer the glamour dropped, and Vice Principal van Doorsler stood before him, eight feet of charcoal-colored power suit and midnight black fur. She tucked a small amulet back under her blouse, and leaned down to where Nikolas and Crash stood, frozen to the spot.

"Haven't seen these before. What are they, Ataktos?" she asked, as she examined the capsules in his frozen fingers. Her tail swished lazily back and forth behind her, Nikolas found himself following its motion despite his best effort to look her in the eyes. "M-methylphenidate." he stammered, "They’re legal in the city, I checked at the ZEA Matrix portal."

She put on a look of mock astonishment, and then purred "Legal, you say? Well, I'm sure that's why you came down here to sell them, isn't it?" This close, Nikolas had an uncomfortably intimate view of her pearly fangs. "I've been keeping an eye on you for a while, but I never thought I would catch you selling dope." With a lightning-fast snatch, she plucked both the cred chip and the pills from boys’ nerveless fingers.

Standing up to her full height again, she adjusted her blazer so that it was once again perfectly pressed, then dropped both pieces of contraband into a plastic evidence bag, sealing it up with a pinch across the adhesive tab. "You both will come with me to Principal Marttinen's office." She fixed Crash with a hard stare, and asked "Barry, do I need to carry you there, or can I trust you to arrive under your own power by the end of eighth period?" Crash didn't bother trying to reply, van Doorsler wasn't in a mood to wait for his answer. Instead he slowly nodded, and started for the stairs, one footstep at a time.

Seeing that Crash was on his way, she turned back and looked down at Nikolas. "Very well," she said in a business-like tone, "that gives us plenty of time for you to tell us all about where you got these drugs from."

"Oh come on, Miss van Doorsler, drugs are something you buy from a Troll in an alleyway. These are legal pharmaceut--" He never got to finish his thought, her ears flattened against her skull in sudden anger, and she grabbed him by the shoulder with one huge paw, pricking him just the tiniest bit with her claws.

"Shut it, Ataktos." She growled, "You want to watch your attitude, a lot of our staff and students have SURGEed family members." With a shove, she spun him around, and marched him past Crash and up the stairs, towards the Principal's office.

\----

The administration was fair, despite van Doorsler's best efforts to sink him, but he still ended up being expelled. He would have to transfer schools, if he didn't want to be left a grade behind.

But it could have been worse, he had heard of others who had been arrested for having study-buddies on campus, to say nothing of selling them. It was a lucky break that he had done his research thoroughly, methylphenidate had recently been taken off the Controlled Substances list for ungulates, and that had bought him enough leeway to plead a misunderstanding.

His parents had been furious when von Doorsler made him call them from the principal's office, and later on over dinner his father had tried to read him the Riot Act. But he had spun them a story about how he had only done it to help save Crash's musical career. He played it out and in the end they just gave up yelling at him, subsiding into a disappointed funk. He had gone to be without eating much; Nikolas was sure they would forgive him, if he could just keep his muzzle clean in the future.

Alone in his room, he got onto his tablet computer and reconnected to the Matrix, easily bypassing the blocking software that his parents had tried to install on it. He didn't feel like sleeping, so doing a quick bit of research on Savanna Technical School seemed like a better use of his time. After an hour and a half of methodical Zoogling, he snapped the device shut again and flopped backwards onto his bed, groaning softly. It was worse than he had thought; way out at the far edge of Sahara Square, a bus ride across two separate lines was the only way to get there in less than an hour's time. The area was horrible, a freight airport on one side and a light industrial park on the other. Worst of all, the students were at least half Orks and Trolls; apparently that was one of the more Goblinized districts of the city. Just what every Elf loves to see.

'Maybe it won't be so bad...' he thought as he lay there, sleep finally coming to him. 'It's only for the rest of the year, what's the worst that can happen?'

\----

Not entirely surprisingly, the worst did happen to Nikolas, and he managed to pull it off before lunch on his first day there.

His day had started with an unexpected alarm clock, startling him out of a dream involving Miss van Doorsler and a red velvet loveseat that he was supposed to be delivering. He pulled clothes out of drawers in the pre-dawn light, a pair of khaki trousers and a collared short-sleeve shirt. Despite his early wake-up call, he almost missed the cross-town bus, and had to sprint the last hundred yards to catch up before it pulled back into traffic. He arrived at Savanna Tech a few minutes before his first class, sweaty, fidgety from the long trip, and already in a bad mood.

First period was Fundamentals of Algebra; he took the one free desk in the crowded classroom, raised his paw when the instructor tried to pronounce his name for roll call, and spent a few minutes struggling to make his tablet download the instructor’s assignment. The work was laughable, he had already covered this material two years ago at Zootopia High. Unfortunately, the school's Matrix connection was non-existent, so after filling in his homework sheets, there wasn't anything to do but lean backwards at the desk and wait for the passing bell to ring.

After a few minutes of looking around the classroom, he started to study his classmates in a bit more detail. There were more Orks and Trolls in this room than there had been in his year at ZHS. Most of them were wearing casual wear or work clothes, a few here and there had what he took to be gang uniforms.

"Hey, new guy, what did you get on question three?" What was it with question three, was it so hard to just skip it and come back later? Nikolas glanced behind him, saw that his interrogator was an overweight Bighorn sheep wearing a grungy Deaf Leopard t-shirt. The sheep glanced around Nikolas as he turned, trying to spy more of the answers that he had written onto the tablet.

"Umm, are we supposed to be helping each other?" Nikolas asked, glancing towards the teacher for any signs of disapproval. No worries there, the big warthog in charge of the classroom was bent over another student's desk, they were reading a fashion magazine together. Seeing that the coast was clear, he turned back to the ram and whispered "Twenty seven. And number four is eleven kilometers, number five is C, and number six is 'before the train arrives at the station.'"

The ram was furiously scribbling with the tip of one hoof at his battered school tablet. "Uh huh, uh huh, good stuff." He looked up at Nikolas again, asking "so what's number seven?"

Nikolas grinned, and replied "Number seven is gonna cost five Nuyen."

The sheep wore a puzzled expression as he paged through the assignment. "Huh?" he bleated, "The question's not about money, it's about pieces of fruit..."

Nikolas rolled his eyes, "Look, just give me twenty and that tablet, and I'll do the whole thing for you." The sheep finally caught onto his offer, and he scowled but fished in his pockets, coming up with a handful of worn banknotes, shoving them across the desk towards Nikolas.

"You're lucky I gotta pass this class," the ram grumbled, "guess it's true what they say about foxes, huh?"

Nikolas grinned, pocketing the cash and starting to get to work copying in the answers. "You're right, I guess I am lucky! You got any other homework that you need done? I wanna have a good time this weekend and I could use a bit of extra cash."

\----

Done with his morning classes, Nikolas decided to skip his mandatory study hall, and instead he took a leisurely stroll down to where the cafeteria was supposed to be. Wandering through the double doors, he was surprised to see so many of the other students dining here. The popular thing to do at ZHS was to get a campus pass and go to a downtown eatery or food cart. 'Guess that's not much of an option here' he reflected, 'unless you want a plate full of industrial waste.'

He stuck his hands in his pockets, and considered his options. Mostly Orks and Trolls were lined up at the hot-food windows, Nikolas could see banks of fryers and bug-burga griddles going overdrive trying to keep up with the line's demands. Next to the hot food, there was a vegetarian counter; a light-up sign proclaimed that today's special was spinach lasagna, with black bean and corn salad. He rubbed his chin, considering it, but the line was moving too slowly for his taste. That left the vending machines on the far side of the room, lit up and hawking their wares with a series of holo-displays.

Crossing the big dining hall, Nikolas passed groups of happy chatting mammals, examining each as he passed. At one table, a gaggle of grazer girls gossiped and gave great grooming guidance. Nikolas shook his head, they must be out of their Chomper minds if they thought that fluorescent nylon was ever going to make a comeback.

At the next, a trio of tough-looking tigers tried to train their Teddy-boy tresses by application of more Doctor T's Tonsure Tonic. The stink of hair goop made his nose itch, and he held his breath until he was out of the cloud of vapors again.

At a table by the first bank of vending machines, one that thankfully didn't inspire Nikolas's bored mind to flights of alliteration, an elephant and an Orkified bison were arm wrestling across the lunch table. They both let out grunts and growls of concerted effort, while a group of smaller mammals cheered them on both of these sounds over a background of creaking synthetic wood and groaning metal from the overloaded table.

Nikolas slowly passed the first machine, then the second, not seeing anything that wasn't going to give him cheezy-flavored heartburn by the end of his next class. The third machine was more promising; it had less fried junk food and more veggie-based baked goods. He scanned the selection, fishing in his pocket for the bills that he had collected off the ram in first period. A green and while packet caught his eye, Mama Enzo's Lentil Crisps! Oh man, he hadn't had these for years, ever since his family had moved from the little condo on Hill Street, and he wasn't able to stop by that otter's corner store on the way home from school.

As he fed the bills into the machine, a nagging thought crossed his mind. The noise of the arm-wrestling Trolls had ceased, but there weren’t any shouts of triumph or angry demands for a rematch. Matter of fact, it had gotten extremely quiet all of a sudden. As Nikolas leaned over to tap the item number into the machine's work keypad, he caught the sight of a tall figure, reflected in the Plexiglas front display. Tall, and very broad, and very close to him. Uh oh...

Nikolas turned around slowly, pasting a grin onto his muzzle as he gazed up at the big ram, two meters tall if Nikolas was any judge. Wait, it wasn't a ram, not unless this one wore makeup and curled their head fur. Still had the horns, and now that he looked more closely Nikolas could see the points of sharp fangs protruding between her lips. Must be Goblinized then, he was going to have to tread lightly.

"Sorry, am I in your way?" he asked, "Lemme just get my snacks and I'll--" He didn't have the chance to finish, instead he was grabbed by the neck and lifted up to face level. The ewe stared at him through one bloodshot eye, the other being swollen shut behind an impressive looking shiner.

"Iz you 'da one what took my brudda's lunch money?" Nikolas squirmed, the pressure on his throat wasn't choking him, but it made speaking in anything more than a gasping whisper impossible. "Kinda heavyset kid, wearing a concert tee?" The sheep nodded once.

"Took is maybe a little unfair," Nikolas wheezed, clutching at her hoof to take some of the weight from his neck. "I offered to help him, but asked for a little something in return, that so wrong?" The ewe snorted, and carried him one-armed up the line of vending machine to where a small crowd of mammals waited, the ram from his Algebra class at the front of the pack.

"That's him!" the ram cried, pointing to Nikolas where he dangled. "Give him the powerbomb, Bertha!"

"Dis lil' runt? Nah, he just splatter if I do that." She dug through Nikolas's pockets with her free hand, pulling out the remaining bills and his own credstick besides, then tossed them over to her brother. "Ok knife ears, time to go where you belongs." As she said this, she had carried Nikolas over to one of the overflowing lunchroom compost bins, and with little ceremony she shoved him into it headfirst.

Nikolas struggled back up from the soupy mess, spluttering and coughing up a mouthful of cold chili fries. His clothes were soaked with a dozen separate greasy stains, his tablet case was still lodged down there in the mess somewhere. And worst of all, the spectacle was slowly attracting the attention of everyone in the lunchroom, the laughter starting almost as quickly. Nikolas dug frantically through the mess, grabbed the nylon carrying case ('Thank God I got a waterproof one.' he thought) and hopped out of the waste bin. He left a trail of greasy brown paw prints behind him as he sprinted out the fire doors, the mocking laughter pursuing him all the way.

\----

Nikolas had barely noticed the doors clicking shut behind him, before his composure failed, and the sobs started. He ran on, not sure where he was going, not really caring, so long as it was further away from where he had just been humiliated. This must be the back side of the campus, since he could see the parking structures and warehouses of the airport beyond the school's chain link fence.

No other students were anywhere around, so he slowed to a walk, then a crawling plod, trying to stifle his sniffles as he went along. Out in the bright sunlight, and the ever-present Sahara Square heat, his sodden clothes began to dry, although they still reeked. He plopped down on a cement bench next to a recessed stairwell, and started to sort through his belongings, determining what was ruined and what might be salvaged.

"Fucking Troll bitch," he growled, the anger at his mistreatment kindling into a simmering rage. "If she wasn't twice my size I'd have ripped those stupid looking horns right off of her. Fuck!" he hissed, as he picked at the goo encrusting his tablet case. He didn't want to let any of the foul slime to work its way inside and ruin the expensive device. The last thing he needed was to go begging his parents for a replacement.

"Now I'm stuck here at this God-forsaken drekheap school with half the city's Trogg scum--"

"Oi! You want's ta' knock it off wit' all da' Trogg-bashin? I'm tryin' to take a nap back 'ere..." a deep voice rumbled. Nikolas froze, the words caught halfway out of his mouth. He slowly turned, and peered down into the stairwell, where the voice had come from. At the bottom of the stairs, another student was sitting on his haunches against the concrete wall, his shoulders slumped in relaxation. He squinted up at Nikolas, one enormous ear held at an angle to block the sunlight from shining into his eyes. Around them, a pair of thick, curling horns protruded.

"Ohh, hey. Sorry about that..." Nikolas offered lamely, "I didn't think anyone else was back here. I haven't been having a great morning..."

The big mammal (Fennec fox, Nikolas observed, must be a Fennec with those ears) grinned up at him, and observed "I didn't t'ink you was. Wha' happen?"

"Had a little run in with a girl named Bertha," Nikolas replied, "one thing lead to another and she decided to give me a personal tour of the cafeteria, starting with the composting bins." He grinned, and scratched behind one long ear, dislodging a stray macaroni noodle stuck in his fur. "I think she likes me, really..."

The Fennic giggled, it sounded like chunks of pavement being scraped up by a bucket loader. "Dat sound like Bert'a all right! She a mean Trogg bitch, and no mistake." He grew serious for a second, and pointed up at Nikolas with one thick clawed finger. "But you no call her dat, _so ka?_ Dat is our word, like Stunteez for 'da Dwarves, or Dandelion Eaters for you Elves."

Nikolas blushed under his fur, and muttered "Sorry about that, really I am. I'm not a racist or a speciesist."

The troll rose to his feet, put both hands behind his back and stretched, cracking his back with a sound like a burst of machine gun fire. "I t'ink we oughta get you clean, or you stink up 'da class. Wait here, ok?"

Reaching into his pocket, he produced a key, and unlocked the door at the bottom of the stairwell. It revealed a small custodian's room, full of landscaping tools and bottles of cleaning chemicals. The troll took a thick black hose from its bracket over a sink; standing halfway up the flight of steps, he unleashed a torrent of cold water onto him, spraying back and forth as Nikolas gasped and danced back and forth under its barrage. Finally, the shut the spray down and examined his work as Nikolas stood there shivering. "Izza good job, you is clean enough no one give you drek."

Through chattering teeth, Nikolas gasped "Y-y-you w-w-ouldn't happen t-to have a leaf b-blower in there, w-would you? N-not sure I can d-dry out in time."

His broad face fell as the Troll realized he had miscalculated this part of his plan. "Oh yeah, dat gonna be a problem. Ok, I can fix, just stay dere a bit." He disappeared back into the storeroom for a few minutes, while Nikolas shivered and dripped water from most of his parts. Finally, the fennec reemerged with a worn paper bag clutched carefully in both paws.

"You got to not tell no one I do 'dis, ok?" He reached into the bag, and withdrew a carefully constructed wooden frame, it formed a nine-pointed geometric figure with what looked to Nikolas's inexperienced eye like a dreamcatcher suspended in the middle. "It gonna be alright, I done dis before lots of times, but you not supposed to do summoning outside 'da lab." The troll began to softly chant, waving the wooden dreamcatcher back and forth, and to Nikolas's astonishment a warm breeze began to blow past him. He could feel his fur start to stand up on its ends, and there was a strange smell in the air, exotic spices and ozone and something else indescribable.

The breeze slowly grew stronger, slicking the water back out of Nikolas's fur and clothes, and forcing him to lean into its force. The troll was grinning as he fanned; "I told you dis gonna work," he grunted, "just gonna make it a little faster." He started to chant again, and increased the speed that he waved the implement.

The winds rapidly accelerated, and Nikolas was alarmed to notice that he was starting to slip backwards across the concrete before its force. Hurriedly, he dropped to all fours, and lowered his muzzle to present as little resistance as possible to the howling gale. Through the roaring in his ears, he heard the Troll muttering "Oh, wait, dat not how it supposed to go, wait **wait WAIT!** "

At this last bit, Nikolas was buffeted by the strongest force yet. He felt his body being forced backwards, claws scraping across the ground as he squeezed his eyes tightly shut. He howled wordless protests, as the wind whipped past him, ripping at his clothes and fur, before it pulled him free and flung him bodily back into the chain link fence. His head snapped back, and everything went still and quiet.

\----

Nikolas relaxed in the cozy warmth of his bed, dozing in the few pre-alarm-clock minutes left to him. Nothing to worry about, no new school, no strange teachers, and definitely no big scary Trolls. A hand gently shook him, and someone was talking to him, telling him that he had to get up. Rolling over onto his side with a grumbled "justafewmoreminutes", he nuzzled his face into the concrete, feeling as its coarse texture scratched pleasantly against the underside of his chin, and the sun's rays baked down onto his fur.

Concrete. Blazing sunlight. Something was wrong with this scenario...

Opening his eyes, he beheld the Troll-fox's short but broad muzzle a few inches in front of his own. He froze for a moment, and then scrambled up and away, trying to get his bearings. Noonday sun overhead and the low whine of a big jetliner on final approach, beyond the other fox's worried face loomed the cinderblock wall of the Savanna Tech gymnasium. Drek, so it hadn't just been a dream after all.

"You all right? I t'ink I know what I did wrong back 'dere, ummm, for what dat worth." The Troll grinned down sheepishly at him, his gigantic ears drooping in sorrow. He scratched at the back of one paw, then asked "You gonna be OK?"

Nikolas wobbled as he rose to one knee, and then regained his feet. Leaning drunkenly against the chain-link that had evidently caught him in flight, he patted himself down. A swollen lump at the back of his skull, from where he had been blown backwards into the fence, and the pockets of his shirt had been ripped halfway off the fabric by the wind. But on the other hand, his coat was completely dry, if a little more floofy and wild looking than usual.

"Other than the bump on the head, I think I'm fine." Nikolas answered, as he started to comb his fur into a more manageable state. "That was really something back there with the wind tunnel. I didn't know that they had a Thaumaturgical Studies program at Savanna Tech." 

The Troll's face, already crestfallen, tumbled into near despair at this. "Yeah. 'Dere is. But I ain't in it. Gonna be 'da city's most wizz-bang janitor someday, just watch." He shoved his hands into his pockets, and shuffled away, back towards the door to the little supply closet underneath the building.

"Wait, why not?" Nikolas trotted along behind him, tucking his shirt into pants to disguise the frayed edges that had developed along the bottom hem. "If you can do something like that, they've got to let you into the program!"

The Troll finished locking up the storage room, and turned to face Nikolas, an angry scowl replacing his hangdog expression. "Cause I ain't got a Green Card or a Blue Card even. Dat why." He fished in his pocket, pulled a battered wallet out, flipped it open and dangled it in front of Nikolas's face. A years older photograph stared back at him from a red- and grey-striped Zootopia Civil ID card. Nikolas blinked, scanning the details quickly despite his better intentions. Name of Fionnbharr Ó Fiannachta, no fixed address, no fixed employment, no ZIN issued.

"Dat right. I'z a red-card-Trogg, no job, no home, no rights." He folded up the wallet, put it back into the pocket of his trousers. "So dat why I can't get in 'da program, no security clearance, and only 'da basic civil bennies." He scooped up Nikolas's tablet case and handed it over, before plopping down on the cement bench with a meaty thud. "You better go back to 'da classrooms, it gonna be afternoon period soon."

Nikolas held his tablet, looking at the faint lines of ink etched into the cover, where he had drawn across the fabric with a ballpoint pen one day while bored in class. His classes at ZHS, more advanced than anything that he was going to face here at Tech, were never able to hold his attention. The only things that he had enjoyed, he reflected, were the hustles. And what would be a better hustle than to get this nobody-from-nowhere Troll enrolled in the system, and into a program reserved for the upper echelon of Zootopia's students.

A sly grin spread across his face, and he started to speak rapidly. "Listen, Finn, can I call you Finn? Meet me here after classes get out, there's a few things I need to ask you about the school. You wouldn't mind that, right? It's basically the least that you can do for me, after you almost cracked my skull on the fence post back there, am I right?" Fionnbharr nodded slowly, unsure where this was going.

"Ok, good deal," Nikolas continued, his mind racing ahead, "So if you do that for me, I gotta do something for you, it's only fair. If you help me learn about this school, I'll help you get a Blue card. Now don't be defeatist," he interjected, seeing the Troll start to object, "it's just a matter of paperwork to get one, since you already have a job and a residence SOMEWHERE, right? The pieces are all there, we just have to bring them together, and get someone down at City Hall to pay attention." Nikolas rubbed his paws together in excitement, seeing his plan already starting to come together. He stuck out his right paw and asked "Whadd'ya say, do we have a deal?"

Fionnbharr blinked, and scratched his head, bewildered by Nikolas's fast-talk. But after a moment he grinned, grasped Nikolas's offered paw, and gave it a bone-crunching handshake. "I t'ink you crazy, even for a Elf." he said, "But I'm in, no zogging way I pass 'dis chance up. What your name, anyway?"

"Nikolas Ataktos, at your service." Nikolas replied, trying to massage a bit of blood back into his mangled forelimb. Fionnbharr thought for a second, then said "If you call me Finn, I gonna call you Nikko."

"Finn and Nikko. I like the sound of that!" Nikolas replied happily. "Meet me in the library after the last class is over, we’ve got some research to do!"


End file.
